Belding Hill Farms
404 Ravine Road E5N 7S9 Hampton, NB, Canada

What a long day, we cleaned out all the pens in the old barn, and new straw bedding for everyone. While cleaning Chev's stall we put him in the main are of the barn ( he and Dee are still in the old barn for now). Ever the opportunist, he tried to get into the water room, Luke got him out of there, and got back in his stall just in time for him to open the freezer that has his and Dee's grain in! Luke yelled, Chev nickered, while Luke was scrambling to get him out, Chev t...ook a brand new bag of oats out of the freezer and opened it! Bugger! He really is to smart for us! Anyways, once Luke got that sorted out Chevy took full advantage of the door being left open and left the barn running, bucking and farting away! Once Luke caught up to him he was on our lawn rolling in the snow! And after to much disgust, Chevy reluctantly came back with Luke, but came into his stall to help us clean. Do you have any idea how helpful an 1800 lb horse really is??? Let me just say that he and Scott our Chocolate lab both don't understand personal bubbles... We also moved the pigs around some, and now have Curly in with Big Momma, for a little romance, we hope. And if they do their job like we hope, we will have a mixed litter of Tamworth x Berkshire piglets in April. I should also mention that Curly was just in with Sally for the last few weeks, so fingers crossed baby Berks in the end of March. Today we also welcomed 2 new ducks to our homestead, Toast and Buttons. They are Rouens, and hopefully we will get some eggs/duckling from them this spring. Have a great night everyone, and keep a close watch on our page tomorrow for who the winner will be of our Belding Hill Farms Turkey giveaway!

Luke and I want to thank Bonnie and Jeffrey Floyd for their help the other day in getting us some hay! We simply can't thank you enough. One of our suppliers sold ours, so now we are on a frantic search for about 40 round or large square bales for our cows. If anyone knows where we could get some, please message us. Have a great day!

Husband and Wife are Christmas Shopping at a busy shopping mall . The wife suddenly noticed that her husband was missing and as they had a lot to do, so she called him on his cell. The wife said " Where are you, you know we have lots to do." He said "You remember the jewelers we went into about 10 years ago, and you fell in love with that diamond necklace? I could not afford it at the time and I said that one day I would get it for you?"... Little tears started to flow down her cheek and she got all choked up "Yes, I do remember that shop." she replied. "Well I am in the chainsaw shop next door to that." This reminds me of someone who I might be married to... J.

Hey everyone. We thought we would share our latest gong show with you all. Last Monday Nov 2nd, I ( Jill) went and bought a new Hereford cow calf pair from the same farm we bought our other Herefords from last year. And last Friday they were delivered here. So while I was still at work ( I'm a school bus driver) between 3:30 ( when I checked in last)and 4:10 ( when I got home) our dreams of expanding our little beef heard turned upside down. As the cow and calf were unload...Continue reading

Update - Winner is Connie Loughrey Well hello Belding Hill Farms Peeps. As the horrible year 2020 comes near to a close, we want to celebrate all the tremendous support you all have shown us over the year and we hope we have been able to offer a slightly different perspective to the doom and gloom that has been prevalent on all the social media and news reports. We would like to give away a Christmas turkey to a random page follower (we will put in a ballot for every like, ev...ery comment, every friend tagged and every share - Max of 4 per person). We will pick a winner in the next week or so. (Since we have many followers that are not local to us, the winner will be responsible to pick up the turkey from the farm). We have had a successful year, despite COVID-19, with our barn projects nearing completion, the birth of 2 calves, several lambs, piglets, chicks, turkeys and ducklings, the addition of several new high end breeding chickens, the addition of 2 new 288 egg incubators, the addition of another draft horse (Miss Dee), the addition of a new Hereford cow and calf and another calf (Darla), the hopefully successful artificial insemination of 3 of our cows, the launch of our YouTube channel (which now has over 600 subscribers and 30,000 views), freezers full of chicken, pork and beef, fire wood cut (not in the basement yet - LOL), mushroom logs started (first small fruiting already harvested) and recent news that our new female purebred Labrador Retriever puppy should be due in mid January (she will breed with our Scotty in two years time hopefully). I'm sure we are forgetting many of the things we have done over the year, but we feel proud of our accomplishments and very thankful for all of the love and support we have received. Your interest in our craziness means the world to us and we value those of you who have been customers of ours over the year and years past and look forward to meeting new customers in the coming year. As we begin to slow down with our outside projects, we will be shifting focus to start preparing for the upcoming spring season chick sales, lamb and piglet sales and whatever other adventures we will get into to. Look for us to put out requests for you to join our mailing list in the weeks to come. Again, thanks from the bottom of our hearts and please like, comment, tag friends and share this post for a chance to win a Christmas turkey. Please add comments of what you have liked seeing, what you haven't liked seeing and feel free to give us suggestions of what you would like to see from us in the future. Merry Christmas Jill and Luke and family (2 legged and 4 legged)

Well we almost got the chicken barn and breezeway roofed today! Just 2 more custom sheets tomorrow and some gable trim and end wall flashing and we will call that done!!

Steel for the chicken barn showed up today, we finished installing the rafters between the chicken barn and main barn and finished strapping the roof of the chicken barn. We have to finish the back facia projection and then we are ready for the steel.

Bit more accomplished today. End wall framed in (last wall - YEE HAW), strapped, door installed and 3/4 boarded in! Nearly have the chicken barn closed in. Tin will be here next week.

Barbara the chicken is my construction manager. She's out this morning performing her quality control checks to make sure I'm doing things up to her standards! She's a hard boss, but fair!!

Well another first here at the farm today! We have been synchronizing the heat cycles of our two Hereford moms and one of our dairy girls with CIDAR’s and fertility medicine for the last 10 days and this morning we had Dennis Anderson from Anderson A.I. Service down to artificially inseminate the 3 girls. If all goes well, August 4th 2021, we should have 3 new calves here. We will likely have the provincial vet come down and perform pregnancy checks in a month or two. In January we plan to A.I. our other dairy girl, so that next year we will have a steady supply of milk. This is the bull that is the dad for the beef moms!

Well this afternoon was a big one for the main barn!! We enlisted the help of my good friend, Roger Kennedy's dad, a master carpenter for 45 years or so. He set it up and figured it all out and put us right to work! The ridge board is up, 6 sets of rafters in place, everything leveled and plumbed and ready to receive the rest of the rafters. Once the rest are in, we will install the collar ties, cross supports and strap the roof and then install the metal!! We are relieved t...o be making real progress in the last two weeks, you never know, we may even beat mother nature!! Everybody keep your fingers crossed for us!! A great big thank you to my partner in crime, Pat Coleman and my father in law Bert Fowler who never misses an opportunity to help Jill and I with all our craziness!

This was such a good video, I couldn’t help sharing it! Take a few minutes and watch it and open your mind to what he is saying. https://youtu.be/BvCHCndLdM0

Bit more progress in the last 2 days. We boarded in the back wall the chicken barn, installed the front eave projection and windows and doors and strapped the front wall and ready for boards now. We are hoping to get some of the main barn rafters up tomorrow and the ridge board. Once we get a few sets up, the rest should go smoothly.

A bit more progress today. We got more than half of the rafters between the two barns installed. Rafters are slow, tedious work, but at least when they are done, it's big jobs out of the way. We would have finished them, but we ran out of rafters.

For anyone that's still be looking for birds, or other furry friends, this would be a great opportunity!

Well Big Momma decided she needed some time outside, and let herself out, and her band of merry misfits. We still have 5 looking for new homes, and can leave next weekend!

Today ONLY because I am at the sawmill. We will only be offering this when I'm at the mill. We have a huge pile of slab wood. Come on up with a truck and fill it with slabwood for $20. The slab wood isn't at our house but near. Message our page for directions. Its suitable for kindling or camp fires. You can cut it to size where its at or take it home long length. COME AND GET IT!!!

A bit more progress yesterday. Rafters straightened, roof boarded in mostly (38" more needed - the 5 runs of 4" boards in the middle will support 12' see through roof panels to allow lots of natural light into the chicken barn to help with egg production) and 1 wall boarded in. Slowly but surely, but we are racing against mother nature and she has the upper hand! Date day for us today!

Another awesome day of progress!!

More progress! Upstairs all boarded in and 1 and a half walls built. Now we are out of material, so tomorrow is a sawmilling day to get enough material to finish 2 and a half walls. Then we will be starting to build the 4 walls for the chicken barn! Slowly but surely. I sure wish we had another September!! Time is running out! Big shout out to Joyce Walsh Hawkins, we couldn't have done it without you!

Mission for today is to saw these big boys!! No room to spare on the mill bed. I can saw 20.5 foot and these are that long ir longer. These are the best of all the logs we cut last winter and will be rafters 8"x1.5"x20.5'

If anyone has any drop apples, or old stuff from your gardens, our animals would love to have them! You can drop them off, and see the new piglets and calves as well. And yes, the piglets are sleeping in the feed trough.

We've made more progress this weekend and we still have two more days off. We are beginning to saw the 90 twenty foot 1.5""x8" rafters and 30 twelve foot 1.5"x8" rafters we need today. We have just one wall left to build. It's taken a while but we are getting closer.

This little cutie joined our farm last night. She's a Holstein/Hereford cross. She's with Lena for a few day's, then we'll put her in with the rest of our riff raff. Have a great Friday everyone!

Here is a small video tour of our barn build.

We have 7 piglets that need a new home anytime after October 24th. There are a few females, and there are 4 males that are intact. They are Berkshire Tamworth crosses. If you are worried about keeping pigs over the winter, it's actually easier we find. They stay in their pens with lots of straw or hay, and cuddle in together to keep warm. Thet just need a shelter that is as draft free as possible. The only "downside" is their water freezes, but we already deal with that for the other animals, so it's not that big of a deal for us. They are $100 each and we do strongly advise having minimum 2, for reasons stated above, plus they just thrive better with a friend. Please pm us if you have any other questions.

Thank you to one of my oldest and dearest friends, Joyce Walsh Hawkins for having this made for me. I wore it with pride on my bus today. (That's our farm logo on the mask)

Well not much progress today on the barn, but we were able to get 7-8 cord of our seasoned firewood out of the woods thanks to Ravine Trucking and Escavating (check out their page even though I can't tag it, I tagged it in the comments). What a great rig this is! We cut all this wood in January/February as part of a thinning operation. There is likely another 4-6 cord there. The thinned area looks great now with many new small beech, maple and birch coming up in the thinned area. Also, we left a great deal of wood standing and the thinning will just promote the growth of what remains. Great to get a start on our firewood!! Thanks Tom

Good morning everyone! Just wanted to give you all a little update on Big Momma ( our Tamworth sow). Some of you may remembered, she had a terrible farrowing in February. She had 13 piglets, and only 3 survived! This was devastating for Luke and I. Well on August 29th and 30th Big Momma farrowed again, and it was very rough on her. She had 14 piglets, 3 of which were stillborn. Luke stayed with her for the whole labor and had he not, she would have killed her piglets. ... Because of her cheery disposition, we took the piglets from her and put them in with Henry, our Katahdin ram! Well Henry took his new roll very seriously in looking after his new charges, and laid down so the piglets could snuggle in for warmth. Then Every few hours we would go down to the barn to put them back in with Bug Momma to feed, but often times the piglets had already made their way back to her pen! She did loose 1 other piglet, but we are ok with that, it's far better than last time! So around the end of October, we will have a few piglets looking for a new barn! These are Tamworth x Berkshire crosses and are great pigs to raise for your homestead. If interested please pm our page to for further information. See more

Pat and I have been feeling guilty that we haven't had the big guy (Chevy) out working since he cultivated the potatoes 8 weeks ago. Chevy was anxious to get to work today and he kept me busy enough that I didn't get a picture of him today, but you will have to trust me that he was there. He did great today and pulled out 4 - 8' logs off a big white birch (the picture of me standing on the stump) and several small trees that we cleared out of the area. The big white birch was... dead, but we were able to salvage nearly a cord of firewood. We lose so many trees like this, so we were happy to get it. We try to always thin and drop any hung up dead falls when we are in an area and leave it looking better than when we started. While clearing the trail, we found an old wagon wheel and hung the pieces on a tree (see picture). It did make us wonder the circumstances that left that wheel where we found it today and which one of our relatives left it there. Working with a horse, we are able to protect small hardwood saplings, rather than damaging them, like with mechanical harvesting. This will ensure the understory grows healthy and diverse species of trees. We can cut a small trail as wide as Chev's arse (see pictures) and remove all the wood out the small trail. This trail is the beginning of a trail system that we are building on our woodlot that will be running parallel with 2 other trails running to the property line and they will periodically be connected throughout the woodlot, allowing us to really clean up our woodlot and remove trees from anywhere. We are hoping to set up a 20 acre area that will only be worked with the horses and that will show the work that we can do with them. The work is slower and production is smaller, but when we leave an area, it looks exceptional! Have a great labour day all!

The Belding Hill Farms team is making some progress on our barn today! We nearly have the last downstairs wall built and leveled and then we will be putting up the rest of our upstairs floor joists! Hoping to start boarding in the upstairs floor before the weekend is done!

Bit more progress last night and tonight. All of the inside walls are built on one side and Im 1/3 of the way getting floor joists up on that side. One more interior wall to build downstairs and then I can put up all the floor joists.

Well slowly but surely, we are making progress! Thanks to my brother in law, Jeff Roy, we got two more walls and a header up and squared and levelled last night. We have the big 2x12x13.5 header (lumber in one picture) left to install, install top plates on all the recently stood walls and one more internal wall to build and then we start on floor joists (big pile of lumber in pics is about 1/3 of floor joists needed) for the upstairs hay loft. We couldnt of done any of this without my cousin Pat Coleman doing the majority of the sawing for us! We think we may host a boarding in party in the coming weeks. Any takers? Lol

All the outside walls are now up, and squared. Thanks to everyone who has come out to help us stand these walls. Jill and I also got a start on one of the interior walls, and one portion of it is standing! It's actually starting to look like barn now. Have a great Saturday evening!

I love this sight. All our cows where they are supposed to be, in their pastured area!

*** Update *** All spots have been taken and the draw will be held tonight or tomorrow This is an auction in support of a good friend of ours to help them in their fight with cancer. Please support the cause!!

8 1/2 hours into the smoke, boston butts are wrapped in tinfoil and up to nearly 180 F internal temp and sprayed with apple juice and a bit of apple cider vinegar and ribs are on. 8 more hours to go!! All smoked with apple wood and a bit of maple!!

Well 4 hours into the smoke, the pork shoulders are forming a nice bark and looking good. Just 10-12 more hours for them. Soon be time to put on ribs and then chicken wings later today. I'm quite pleased with the smoker so far. I'll know how to operate it much better by the end of the day!

Getting ready to put 2 boston butts (it was supposed to be 3, but someone's dog got one, grrrr ) on the new smoker!! It's going to be a fun night! I've only been going since 4:45 am this morning! Oh well, I'll sleep when I'm dead!!

A little update on our heard. The calves are growing like bad weeds, Patch is an awesome mama, Red, well she's a little more laid back. Haha. And the Dairy Queens are always friendly and wanting to be pampered.

Miss Diva Dee is getting a little spoiled, new halter, more oats ( for Chev man too), alfalfa pellets, apples and carrots.

Well here is another addition to the homestead. We are hoping this one will earn it's keep better then most additions here! Lol. This is a reverse flow smoker. The fire is lit in the lowest "box" and the smoke travels to the other end of the smoker, under a plate that will absorb heat from the smoke and this plate will help cook the food from the heat radiating off of it. Once the smoke goes to the opposite end of the smoker, it reverses and travels past the food being cooked... and goes out the chimney. I'm not quite ready to cook with it yet, but it's very close. Long Reach Fabrication is building the cooking racks for it shorrly and then we will be ready. We have a few more cosmetic items on the trailer to work on too. We aren't exactly sure how we will be using it to generate income, but we are assuming there will be some interest in using this to cater events or something because on the way home with it yesterday, we had someone stop us and ask for a business card! Lol We are very excited to use this rig, so look for some food pictures in the coming weeks as we learn how to best operate it. Have a great day all

Our newest girl Dee has had a very troubled past. We suspect her owners (not who we got her from, before that) were abusive, which was part of the Old School way to train these horses through fear. Because of this, she is very nervous and doesnt allow people in her bubble easily, which is so different for my cousin Pat and I (my partner in crime and Co-owner of Dee) because Chevy is absolutely bomb proof and acts more like a 1600 lb puppy dog. So after a lot of time spent ...with her in the last 24 hours, we were impressed with this display by her to allow me to pick up her feet. Picking up horse feet is no accomplishment normally, but for this girl, we feel this is a big step towards her recovery and hopefully, ultimately being Chevys partner! (Although currently she likes to bite and kick him!) We took this horse on as a project and already we are seeing her potential, if shown an appropriate amount of love! Have a great day all

Well our latest girl has arrived! Introducing Miss Dee! She's a 7 year old Clydesdale. (Chev has the blue halter and Dee has the gray/brown halter) We have some work to do with her first, before we take her to the woods, and and eventually if things go well her and Chevy will work side by side hauling logs out. ... It's certainly an adventure here, and you just never know what we're up to next here on our ever growing homestead. Take care everyone and Happy New Brunswick Day!

Big night tonight, 2 more walls built and stood up. It's starting to look like something now. One more outside wall and two more walls inside and the downstairs will be done. The two inside walls will determine the pens and such. After these are done, we will be ready for 90 - 2x6 floor joists!!

Another pivotal day for Belding Hill Farms tomorrow. This has nothing to do with the barns we are working on (sort of). Any guesses about what's happening here tomorrow morning? (Before you even say it Chris Erb, we aren't getting a donkey)

I love our view looking west from our place. That is Mount Chamblain in the distance over the fog in the valley! Morning all!! Time to get going on the barn! Have a great day!

Well here we go again! First time momma had 5 cute babies without any help. We were working on other things and Jill checked on them and found the 5 piglets. They are some of the cutest we ever had. They are Berkshire/Tamworth crosses, but one of them almost looks like a holstein. I believe these piglets all have homes already (once weaned in 6-8 weeks), but we have a few more piglets expected (fingers crossed), so if anyone is looking for fall piglets, let us know.

This article features our two beautiful daughters..... we couldn't be prouder of both girls!!

Here's the newest girls, they came from a beautiful farm in Shamrock PEI. They turned 1 years old in May and will be a good breeding age this fall. We are actually trying for a better time of year for lambing next spring. Poor Henry will be kept away from all his ladies until late fall. I'm very pleased with how well the new girls look, and how well the other ewes accepted them into their flock. Introducing Bridget, Hazel, and Mary.(3 at the back right hand side)

Home grown supper. Any guesses as to what we had? Hint, it's a favorite here.

Just a heads up, we need to be very careful of things like this.

Well another truck load of 2x6x8 studs ready to become walls. I should have nearly enough to build 2 more walls now. It sure would be easier to go to the hardware store to buy these, but these are way cheaper and way more satisfying! We actually got 14 2x6x8 out of the one log shown in the picture. It was 23 diameter at the butt. Tomorrow we will begin putting the first few courses of logs on my cousins log cabin we are building and hopefully stand the first wall of ...our barn! Stay hydrated all, thats warm outside!!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share with you our ( Jill's) new girls! Our son was the lucky one who got to accompany me ( Jill) to Shamrock PEI to pick up these 3 yearling Katahdin ewes. Once they are settled in, we'll post better pictures. Have a great evening. J.

Well, the first of 14 walls (6 downstairs in main animal barn, 4 walls upstairs in the same barn and 4 walls in the chicken barn) is built and ready to stand. We are sawing our own lumber for this build from trees we cut this past winter, so building a wall has significant time involved. We are very glad to be going on this project! We will try to keep you all updated as we go.

We had a nice visit (social distancing respected) with some of our new customers this year and as we were chatting, I asked them to please post some pictures of their birds and their new coop (this is their coop). That got me thinking that we sell a lot of birds every year and we have never put up a post asking our customers and followers of our page to put up pictures of their birds, animals, coops, etc (whatever you want to share, as long as it is family rated). So please e...ither put some pictures up in the comments of this post or please always feel free to use our visitor post section and post whenever you want, we love seeing your pictures. So, GO!!!!!